This study goes directly against what specialists like Andrew Zimbalist have found in other studies. Zimbalist isn't in an education department (Ed. departments deal exclusively with secondary and primary education). Zimbalist is an economist who has been looking at the sports business.
Here's why I'd trust Zimbalist over these fellows:
Let's say that I totally accept their findings. But if you read this...:
“Football doesn’t corrode a school’s academic reputation. It enhances it. Contrary to what many academic professionals believe, academic and athletic reputations are not antagonistic. They’re complementary.”
In the
study (link is external) in the July issue of the journal
Sociology of Education, Stevens and two colleagues find that intercollegiate football leagues are composed of schools that tend to be similar in measures of academic reputation. What’s more, over time, scores assessing the academic reputation of schools admitted to any given league come closer and closer to the scores of those already in that league. “This reputation convergence seems to be independent of change in underlying academic quality,” said Stevens.
..the premise is bad. There's a contradiction. If a school's status trends toward the mean in the conference they join, then that must also mean that a school that joins a sucky conference trends downward (so, say Vanderbilt's status will erode over time). Joining the Patriot League may be gret for a school too! Or heck, the Ivy League.
Reputation convergence is great for schools that join the B1G. And that convergence may have a lot more to do with the CIC anyway, and the AAU. But it does not do much for schools that join the SEC. Mizzou and Texas A&M are not going to experience a status bump by joining the ACC. When you join CUSA or AAC, then obviously you hope you're not going to trend toward the mean in these conferences.
Does football enhance reputations? For some schools yes, for some schools no, for others it hurts them (see Rutgers). It's as though these researchers never managed to understand that in football, a team wins the game, and another team loses the game.